This invention generally relates to mosaic arrays of ultrasound transducer elements and to the use of micromachined ultrasonic transducers (MUTs) in arrays. One specific application for MUTs is in medical diagnostic ultrasound imaging systems.
Conventional ultrasound imaging systems comprise an array of ultrasonic transducers that are used to transmit an ultrasound beam and then receive the reflected beam from the object being studied. Such scanning comprises a series of measurements in which the focused ultrasonic wave is transmitted, the system switches to receive mode after a short time interval, and the reflected ultrasonic wave is received, beamformed and processed for display. Typically, transmission and reception are focused in the same direction during each measurement to acquire data from a series of points along an acoustic beam or scan line. The receiver is dynamically focused at a succession of ranges along the scan line as the reflected ultrasonic waves are received.
For ultrasound imaging, the array typically has a multiplicity of transducers arranged in one or more rows and driven with separate voltages. By selecting the time delay (or phase) and amplitude of the applied voltages, the individual transducers in a given row can be controlled to produce ultrasonic waves that combine to form a net ultrasonic wave that travels along a preferred vector direction and is focused in a selected zone along the beam.
The same principles apply when the transducer probe is employed to receive the reflected sound in a receive mode. The voltages produced at the receiving transducers are summed so that the net signal is indicative of the ultrasound reflected from a single focal zone in the object. As with the transmission mode, this focused reception of the ultrasonic energy is achieved by imparting separate time delay (and/or phase shifts) and gains to the signal from each receiving transducer. The time delays are adjusted with increasing depth of the returned signal to provide dynamic focusing on receive.
The quality or resolution of the image formed is partly a function of the number of transducers that respectively constitute the transmit and receive apertures of the transducer array. Accordingly, to achieve high image quality, a large number of transducers is desirable for both two- and three-dimensional imaging applications. The ultrasound transducers are typically located in a hand-held transducer probe that is connected by a flexible cable to an electronics unit that processes the transducer signals and generates ultrasound images. The transducer probe may carry both ultrasound transmit circuitry and ultrasound receive circuitry.
Recently semiconductor processes have been used to manufacture ultrasonic transducers of a type known as micromachined ultrasonic transducers (MUTs), which may be of the capacitive (MUT) or piezoelectric (pMUT) variety. MUTs are tiny diaphragm-like devices with electrodes that convert the sound vibration of a received ultrasound signal into a modulated capacitance. For transmission the capacitive charge is modulated to vibrate the diaphragm of the device and thereby transmit a sound wave.
One advantage of MUTs is that they can be made using semiconductor fabrication processes, such as microfabrication processes grouped under the heading “micromachining”. As explained in U.S. Pat. No. 6,359,367:                Micromachining is the formation of microscopic structures using a combination or subset of (A) Patterning tools (generally lithography such as projection-aligners or wafer-steppers), and (B) Deposition tools such as PVD (physical vapor deposition), CVD (chemical vapor deposition), LPCVD (low-pressure chemical vapor deposition), PECVD (plasma chemical vapor deposition), and (C) Etching tools such as wet-chemical etching, plasma-etching, ion-milling, sputter-etching or laser-etching. Micromachining is typically performed on substrates or wafers made of silicon, glass, sapphire or ceramic. Such substrates or wafers are generally very flat and smooth and have lateral dimensions in inches. They are usually processed as groups in cassettes as they travel from process tool to process tool. Each substrate can advantageously (but not necessarily) incorporate numerous copies of the product. There are two generic types of micromachining . . . 1) Bulk micromachining wherein the wafer or substrate has large portions of its thickness sculptured, and 2) Surface micromachining wherein the sculpturing is generally limited to the surface, and particularly to thin deposited films on the surface. The micromachining definition used herein includes the use of conventional or known micromachinable materials including silicon, sapphire, glass materials of all types, polymers (such as polyimide), polysilicon, silicon nitride, silicon oxynitride, thin film metals such as aluminum alloys, copper alloys and tungsten, spin-on-glasses (SOGs), implantable or diffused dopants and grown films such as silicon oxides and nitrides.The same definition of micromachining is adopted herein.        
There is a continuing need for improvements in the design of ultrasound transducer arrays. The complexity of today's ultrasound imaging system has to be high in order to achieve excellent image quality. Conventional probes typically have 128 signal processing channels (and for arrays with electronic elevation focusing, an increase by a factor as high as five). Also, the potential for making the correct clinical diagnosis with most imaging modalities (including ultrasound) will benefit by a thinner slice thickness. The implementation of a dynamically focused beam both in elevation and azimuth is very complex and expensive, especially for general imaging (as opposed to echocardiac) applications. Also the volume and power consumed by the electronics is prohibitive to making such a system easily portable.